


A Tradition Not Quite Forgotten and a Spark Not Quite Lost

by Mirianne



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Tatooine folklore, hints of forced marriage, references to slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirianne/pseuds/Mirianne
Summary: Not the reunion I intended to write, or Anakin intended to have, but a reunion all the same.  After leaving the Order in the wake of Geonosis, Anakin returns to Tatooine to deliver a wedding invitation and make sure his mother is recovering from her injuries.  He gets a little (and eventually a lot) sidetracked.





	A Tradition Not Quite Forgotten and a Spark Not Quite Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fialleril](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril/gifts).



> This work was originally gifted to Fialleril, and I'm just now getting around to posting it here months later. . .

The first time Anakin stepped foot back on Tatooine without the chains of slavery or the Order holding him was both better and worse than he imagined.

There was none of the fear he’d felt in that last furtive, hurried, panicked visit when he and Padmé had succeeded, barely, in saving his mother.  Fear they’d be too late.  Fear he’d left his mother to a horrible fate when he’d accepted Qui-Gon Jinn’s offer ten years ago now.  Fear the Order would find out he’d disobeyed, gone to Tatooine, tossed aside the wisdom of his perfect Jedi master.  For an attachment.

Now, there was none of that holding him back.  He could stand on Tatooine with his shoulders straight, his head up.  Without hiding or having to bow to  _any_  master.

But it was worse, too.  Even if he was free now, Tatooine wasn’t, and he could sense the pain and fear of others far more clearly now.  It made him regret handing over his lightsaber in the wake of Geonosis.  Not leaving the Order.  He couldn’t regret that, with Padmé at his side, an invitation for his mother to attend their wedding in his pocket.  But he regretted the lack of the weapon he’d dreamed of wielding, to come back here and make a difference.

“It’s nightfall,” Padmé said, watching him stare out at the desert from where they’d landed in Anchorhead, expecting his mother still to be at the doctor’s there.  They had— _Padmé_ had—left money enough to pay for whatever care and however long a stay she’d needed, after all.  He hadn’t trusted Cliegg Lars to do right by her.  But his mother had gone, back to the moisture farm and the man who’d—married her.  

It was a relief that she’d been well enough, even if he wasn’t eager to revisit the homestead.

“Ani?”

He shook himself and looked back at Padmé.

“It’s nightfall.  Do you want to go the farmstead tonight or stay on the ship and make the trip in the morning?”

He stared back out at the desert, at the fading dusk in its shades of violet and red.  Something whispered.  Something incomplete.  “I’d rather stay on the ship tonight, if you don’t mind,” he said at last.

“All right.  Are you all right?”

“Of course.”  But he felt her eyes remain on him.  Slowly, the words came.  “There’s something.  I need to do something.  At first moon’s rise.”  And he understood.  He knew what was calling to him.

“What?  Is something wrong?  Do you sense someone in trouble?  Like your mother?”  Her hand dropped to her blaster as she looked to the medic’s kit.  That was Padmé.  Always prepared to help.

He shook his head.  “It’s. . .tradition.  An old tradition, for someone who has gained their freedom.”

Though he could sense her curiosity, she didn’t ask.  “All right.  What do you need?”

“Water and a cloak.  That’s all.”  He was dressed in traditional Naboo clothes Padmé had given him, though in the black with blue accents he preferred despite her teasing about seeing him in traditional colors, but he’d noticed more blues in her wardrobe in the last week, many with black accents, clothes she tended to wear when they were to spend the day together.  He’d already started stitching the traditional symbols of his own heritage on his clothes and was considering offering to do the same to some of hers.  He liked the symbolism of blending their cultures.

“When is first moon rise?”

He didn’t need to check.  Though he’d been gone from Tatooine for ten years, her rhythms were still in his blood.  “Forty minutes.”

“Time enough to eat with me before you go.”

This time, when he set out into the desert, he went alone and on foot.  Barefoot, actually.  There was none of the urgency as he followed the moon and the pull he felt into the desert, but there was every bit of the purpose.  Padmé had kissed him before he set out and stood on the ship’s ramp until he vanished in shadows.

He walked for several hours without noticing the time pass, always following the guidance the desert and her moons provided.  At moons’ height, he found himself at a small cave and stopped in the entrance, at the edge where moonlight of open desert met shadows of within Tatooine’s shell.

There, he opened his flask, still full, and poured a capful.  He sprinkled it on the ground with care.  “An offering from one of yours who has gained freedom,” he said, and his voice seemed to sink into the shadows.  He filled the cap again, tipped his head back, and poured it over his face.  “Let me be welcome again on your sands, this time as a free being, and wash my memories of their pain but never their power to drive me forward, to shape my resolve.”

The breeze sprang up and dried his face, and if there were tears as well as water, Tatooine would never tell of it.

He sat down, right in the cave mouth, and closed his eyes, finding it far easier to sink into trance here than it had ever been with the Jedi, on whatever world they visited.  His mind went to his mother, to Kitster, to Jira, to many others he’d known as a child slave on Tatooine.  Then it went to hidden clinics and trusted medics and the parts of a scanner he hadn’t thought about consciously in several years but that had remained at the back of his mind as he learned more and more about mechanics.

Slowly, he felt that draw again, after minutes or hours there.  With it came a voice that wasn’t a voice, speaking without words.  Nevertheless, he understood.

_Come, child of my skies._

Unquestioning, he rose and followed that voice, that call, as it grew ever stronger as he walked deeper into the cave, deeper into Tatooine.

_Come.  Come.  Come and_ Look.

He opened his eyes just as the first moon sank low enough for thaer light to penetrate.

It glittered off veins of crystals in the open cavern he’d walked to.

For a long moment, he could do nothing but stare.  Finally, he smiled.  “Thank you, Grandthae.”

After all, it wouldn’t do to be unarmed on the eave of a revolution.


End file.
